Although I'm sure that the original file/print of this image is quite lovely, something bad obviously happened on it's way to the forum. Both the home page image and it's expanded version appear to have been up-sampled from a thumbnail sized image, with the larger being virtually unviewable. I assume this was not intentional, and I'd love to see it re-posted in presentable form.

Whilst it is a nice picture, there is something very wrong about it to me.

Maybe my brain just can't accept that the part of the picture that is terra-firma should be so bright? (Is this HDR'd?)

Or is it that there are no shadows from anything on the ground but yet they're so well lit?

And maybe that last bit is it: there's very obviously a direction of the sun when you look at the clouds, but on the ground, there's very little reference to the sun being where it is.

Thanks, this is not HDR. It is shot with a Phase One IQ 180. And a 28mm lens and this is pretty much like the shot looked. The IQ180 has nearly 14 stops or more Dynamic Range and allows capturing details in highlights and shadows. Perfect for a shot like this. I used Capture One 7.13 to work this image and did the following. I warmed the image up by boosting the temp to around 8300K. Added a tad of magenta on tint. Then increased the contrast slide and added some saturation. Didnít need to do a lot as this was pretty much how the sky looked. I had a whole van of photographers with me me shooting the same shot. This was made during a PODAS workshop. Then using the Dynamic range tool, I recovered a bit in the highlights and some shadows. I made a mask using local adjustments and masked the ground (fore ground bottom of the images), and lightened it some to show detail. I made another layer mask to show some more detail in the mountains and desert floor. Finally I used the color editor to actually desaturate some of the clouds on the top of the image as they were way to orange. And made a bit of boost to the blue in the sky. In regards to your question on detail on the ground. The sun was off to the right of the image. And, these storm clouds literally rolled in. It was very dynamic. The sun had just set behind the mountain range but was not low enough to not light the clouds. So the ground was in shade but the sky was just this dramatic color. The cool thing is we saw this coming and we were on our way back from Beatty a small Nevada town outside of DV. We drove like mad men as we could see the color coming and I knew where we needed to be to get the shot. When Death Valley blesses you with light and sunsets it does so in a big way. So there you have it. As my friends will say it was Raberized.

Thanks, this is not HDR. It is shot with a Phase One IQ 180. And a 28mm lens and this is pretty much like the shot looked. The IQ180 has nearly 14 stops or more Dynamic Range and allows capturing details in highlights and shadows. Perfect for a shot like this. I used Capture One 7.13 to work this image and did the following. I warmed the image up by boosting the temp to around 8300K. Added a tad of magenta on tint. Then increased the contrast slide and added some saturation. Didnít need to do a lot as this was pretty much how the sky looked. I had a whole van of photographers with me me shooting the same shot. This was made during a PODAS workshop. Then using the Dynamic range tool, I recovered a bit in the highlights and some shadows. I made a mask using local adjustments and masked the ground (fore ground bottom of the images), and lightened it some to show detail. I made another layer mask to show some more detail in the mountains and desert floor. Finally I used the color editor to actually desaturate some of the clouds on the top of the image as they were way to orange. And made a bit of boost to the blue in the sky. In regards to your question on detail on the ground. The sun was off to the right of the image. And, these storm clouds literally rolled in. It was very dynamic. The sun had just set behind the mountain range but was not low enough to not light the clouds. So the ground was in shade but the sky was just this dramatic color. The cool thing is we saw this coming and we were on our way back from Beatty a small Nevada town outside of DV. We drove like mad men as we could see the color coming and I knew where we needed to be to get the shot. When Death Valley blesses you with light and sunsets it does so in a big way. So there you have it.

Thanks for a great description of how you transformed the image.

It must have been an amazing sunrise to produce such an image and no less an amazing camera to capture it without HDR.

I was the instructor on the Death Valley PODAS and remember this event well. I never took my cam out of the van but instead helped the participants get there gear out and ready to shoot this amazing sunset. Ultimately by the time I helped someone out doing a 3 shot stitch with there tech cam and decided maybe I had time to get it myself it was gone. Maybe missed a great image but I felt better I helped others get it. To me that was my sunset.